SOURCE: "The Circuitous Path: Albert Einstein and the Epistemology of Fiction," in Einstein and the Humanities, edited by Dennis P. Ryan, Greenwood Press, 1987, pp. 125-34.

In the following essay, Hauptman and Hauptman argue that Einstein's theories were fundamental to the development of absurdist fiction.

When I examine myself and my methods of thought I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

Albert Einstein

The zeitgeist and the general inferences drawn from Einstein's work come to bear most seminally on a group of philosophically oriented novelists conveniently termed absurdists, authors who believe that man is, in Heidegger's phrase, "thrown" into a world devoid of absolutes, order, and meaningfulness. The world that these novelists depict is one in which external meaning is elusive, metaphysical underpinnings are questioned, and knowledge is ephemeral. If this is the antipode...